Charles Brown wrote:
...the
relevant section of Marx on capitalism's positive contribution is here:
As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed
the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned
into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the
capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further
socialization of labor and further transformation of the land and other
means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means
of production, as well as the further expropriation of private
proprietors, takes a new form.
'as soon as ... as soon as ... as soon as ... ' as if this is a linear
process. You have chosen to pull from Marx a moment within capitalism,
in a pure form, and you fail to acknowledge that the maintenance of
neocolonial systems - like migrant labour in this part of the world -
and the articulation of modes of production mean that 'as soon as' is
waiting for Godot. If capitalism develops in an uneven/combined way,
then expecting the capitalist system to generate the forces and
relations of production for socialism in places like Southern Africa is
myopic. Instead, the multiple oppressions capitalism-in-the-periphery
visits upon a wide range of social actors have to be taken on board.
We've had a very dubious run of 'neoMarxist' political economy in South
Africa since the 1960s or so, because the multiplicity of surplus
extraction methods (beyond the point of production, in primitive
accumulation at the expense of black households, women, the environment,
etc) was never taken sufficiently seriously.
CB: Concretely, this aspect is not to the fore right now if the
reference to "violence" is to use of violence by the special repressive
apparatus, the state ( In Luxembourg and Lenin's day WWI was the
expression of the imperialist crisis that was to the foreground) The
crisis and "convulsion" right now in almost 2009 is in the "peaceful"
realm of Wall Street, in the very House of the Financial Oligarchy. That
is where imperialism's contradictions are erupting most drastically at
the moment The capitalist crisis is in finance capital not militarism.
But there's a crucial link, which Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine does
quite a bit to reveal. Simply, capital in crisis turns to extraeconomic
coercive processes.
^^^
CB: All very true. Bravo Red Rosa. But right now the pertinent classics
are those that examine the elementary structures and crises in the
_financial sector_, not the military, or even the colonies and
neo-colonies. There is no crisis of colonial debt repayment _right now_.
Of course there is, looked at from this side of the equator. The Third
World is still getting screwed by paying interest on interest.
There is a crisis and _bankrutpcy_ among Biggest Banks, the Monopoly
Creditors, the Financial Oligarchy. The Emperors themselves are naked.
The "free" market is exposed as a monopoly system, dependent on
"government" largesse, really large. The economic objective state's
ends are not meeting. These objective tendencies of capitalism toward
socialism, these "immanent laws of capitalism itself" are leaping to the
fore. Ironically. it is US bourgeois politicians and media commentators
who have suddenly in the last few months seen the return of the
"Spectre of Socialism" in the explosions in the financial sector. And
the US government _objectively_, through the operation of an immanent
law of capitalism itself, by nationalizing some of the biggest banks
_is_ laying the groundwork for socialism.
I think this is really dangerous wishful thinking (similar to
Hilferding's mistake in Finance Capital: "You take over the six Berlin
banks and you'll control all of German industry"). Here's a recent
argument against this kind of hubris, comrade Charles:
www.counterpunch.org/bond12262008.html
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